happy hunting ground

Heaven; a place of abundance, replete with what one wants. The idea comes from the beliefs of Native American tribes that after death they will go to a paradise with an abundance of game and there- fore always enough to eat. The term appears in the works of James Feni- more Cooper and other writers on Indian subjects. As Cooper wrote in The Pathfinder (1840), “‘Do the dead of the savages ever walk?’ demanded Cap. ‘Ay, and run, too, in their happy hunting grounds.’” Later the term became a euphemism for death, and still later it was transferred to any place of abundant treasures.